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Rob Van Dam Recalls the Wild Crowd at ECW One Night Stand 2006
Image via WWE
During a recent interview with Games Hub, WWE Hall of Famer Rob Van Dam discussed his career, including his WWE Championship win over John Cena at ECW One Night Stand 2006 and the raucous crowd for the event. Below are some highlights:
Rob Van Dam on the Wild Crowd at ECW One Night Stand 2006
“Definitely the most responsive and interactive crowd out of my whole career. They were so loud in the building and with the shape of the room, it doesn’t allow the sound to escape like it does through a huge skydome. So you could hear it and stay connected with it. Everybody’s energy was shared with one big pool of hardcore energy, and that’s the best way to describe that. Just a big pool of hardcore energy that completely filled the room up. I was riding on their energy, it was like surfing on a wave. It was so awesome. I was so excited about that. Like not only did I get ECW back? Which is also my favourite, my best showcasing, but it was on WWE’s centre stage, so everyone gets to see us. And then I felt like I was completely unbeatable. I felt like a superhero that night and like I said it was the mindset I was in. I was a superhero that night. I felt amazing and I was out to amaze.”
His View on the Most Underrated Wrestling Promotion in the World Right Now
“That’s a tough question, but maybe JCW. The clowns seem right now to be getting all the news, all the media. They’ve got Vince Russo writing their shows now and before Vince came along, I’ve been talking to some people and some of those are my friends who founded it, Violent J (Joe Bruce) from ICP. And he’s been asking if there’s anything I could do to help their company. And I noticed last year when I had Joe on my podcast, he was a Christmas guest last year and I noticed back then that their schedule is full. These guys are on tour like all the time. Like who’s doing that? Who’s got that much of a schedule where they’ve got 15 shows in December? What the hell? So they seem like they’ve been consistently keeping their schedule up like that. And then now they have writing that fans are talking about and these characters that they’ve developed there, that are going to be new to fans if the fans haven’t been watching because the characters are really original and different. So I’m gonna say right now, that’s probably the most underrated because people don’t know that they’re about to blow up. Just recently, all the comments that I’ve read are so positive. The fans are so excited about what they’re doing and you want to talk about a promoter who’s a hard worker that’s done everything himself, right from the bottom? That’s Violent J!”
His Unexpected Friendship With Taz
“I mean, one guy that comes to mind is, I think of Taz because I love Taz. What a good guy. And I couldn’t see that at all in like 97, 98, 96 even. Because what I saw back then was somebody that was in my way that didn’t seem to have any respect for me and someone that I needed to rearrange his priorities. That’s the way I saw it back then, this guy, I wanted to break his face more than anything, and now it hurts to think of hurting him. That bothers me thinking of punching him in the face. He’s such a good guy and I don’t really want to hurt anybody. When I’m younger that’s part of the thing, but I’ve always grown in a way that I’ve become more passive and I’ve learned violence isn’t always the way to answer questions. A lot of people don’t see that yet, I see it all the time. I try not to even get angry. I very rarely get angry, that probably doesn’t surprise you because I’m kind of known for it. But when you’re younger, prioritize and focus on bettering yourself in the same ways. You gotta pick all that up throughout life. So I think of that, me and Taz are great friends, a lot of people would be surprised if they saw us in 97, 98. But really on a larger scale the wrestling business has enabled me to become friends with so many people that my parents would not have approved of me hanging out with when I was a young kid.”
As previously reported, Rob Van Dam and his wife, Katie Forbes, recently celebrated the birth of their twins, Karma and Saba, who were born on December 26. The couple has been married since 2021.
